People are increasingly utilizing a variety of computing devices, including portable devices such as tablet computers and smart phones. These devices typically often include touch-sensitive displays enabling a user to provide input to a device through contact with a display screen. These touch sensitive displays, or capacitive touch displays, typically include an insulator such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor above a display for a graphical user interface. Since the human body is an electrical conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the screen's electrostatic field, which is measurable as a change in capacitance. This measurable change in capacitance is used to detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area.
Capacitive touch displays, however, suffer from a number problems. For example, finding the location of a capacitive touch input element, such a virtual or graphical button rendered on a display, without an icon, LED, or any other sort of visual feedback is nearly impossible, whereas mechanical buttons stand out and can easily be found by tracing a finger over a surface. Further, placing and resting a finger, or other conductive body, on the surface of the capacitive touch input element cannot be definitively distinguished from an actual touch intended to provide input. High-pass filters have been used on the measurement data, however, these filters are difficult to tune, require a touch input elements to be measured at an increased frame rate, and are not typically used in practice due to their poor performance. Further, when pressing or selecting a capacitive touch input element, optimal placement of the finger is difficult without a feature on the glass to guide the finger. The touch signal, therefore, may vary depending on the user and can result in an actuation of the input not always occurring as expected. Conversely, with a mechanical button, the edges have a defined area that can be felt and which provide feedback to users in the form of a click or change in pressure against the finger. Therefore, as technology advances and as people are increasingly using portable computing devices in a wider variety of ways, it can be advantageous to adapt the ways in which capacitive touch input elements are provided to users and also how users provide input to the same.